Bot issues

[KageTokage]

The bans for RMT-related bots are so numerous that they just lump them into the general "bans for RMT" category now, so it can be assumed that the "bans for botting" are people using bots for "normal" purposes like lazy level grinding/gathering.

It's not nearly enough when I can typically count upwards of 20 different bots on my server alone on an average day, though. Many of them have been around for several months, if not years, and new ones regularly come into existence either as fresh level-skipped accounts or used accounts that were sold off by their owners.

They really are not handling the situation properly because in a normal MMO the entire GM team tends to be responsible for them; not a separate four man team that doesn't even have a western branch to help ease whatever workload they have.

I also just kind of gave up on reporting them at this point and the only involvement I have with them now is swiftly purging botters from my various linkshells if I happen to notice them doing it.

[KageTokage]

The "conventional" bots like gathering, leveling, marketboard, etc are really not prevalent enough that the GMs couldn't keep them under control once they learn to recognize their behavior patterns.

It's the gibberish-named gil farming bots that are virtually impossible to stop as they're a fully automated process that's exploiting the game on several levels, starting all the way from the account creation process where they're committing credit chargeback fraud to effectively give themselves starter edition accounts at no expense.

[esra01]

snip

Actually it's pretty rare to see those type of bots in JP servers right now. The only time i ever encounter them is when i'm still on my trial period and doing quests on the 3 starting zones. Most of the bots that i encounter right now are actually legit player, checked some of them they actually have level 80 in every combat and DoH/DoL classes.

At this point, the best advice I can give is to ignore them and find the positives of the situation which is cheaper shard/sand costs. It's completely unfair to those of us actually playing the game but I'm telling you it's not worth the energy.

I also just kind of gave up on reporting them at this point and the only involvement I have with them now is swiftly purging botters from my various linkshells if I happen to notice them doing it.

Man this is just extremely sad, SE doesn't care about it, the community ignores it and some of them even happily accepts the botters, and the Special Task Force is just 4 people and we don't even know what they are doing. Nobody cares about the problem

The only thing that could fix this issue is if the GM team that is currently managing harassment issues would be given the authority to investigate and issues the ban hammer for bot reports. The GM team is actually pretty competent imo, atleast on JP server they are pretty quick on handling every case even if their responses are copy pasted messages. Have sent some reports about toxic and improper use of vote kick and all of them got answered within 10 minutes.

If they are given the permission to review and handle bot reports then I think the rampant bot issues would be partially solved since aethersand and crafting crystal botter are pretty obvious and not that many. Plus most of them requires lvl 80 account to do it so they can't just create another one next day.

[Hysterior]

As a former CM on another MMO, I feel like most players have no idea how bots work.

In a nutshell:

• Your reports are pretty much useless. If anything, report players you see/know are purchasing from bots. if you see a group of bots in the area, just report one. Don't bother with the rest of the cluster.
• Banning bots manually is a lost cause, having more CM will not help. They should not even bother with it.
• CMs are probably mass banning IPs on a regular to keep the population under control when a group is spotted but they will always be swamped. That's how good bots are. They change IPs on the fly so there is so much you can detect under one IP.
• No, you cannot spot a bot even before they join the game most of the time.
• Some games (and FF14 being pretty old could be one of them) need maintenance to apply hack/bot patches and these are probably bypassed in a day or so...
• The bot population is different per servers. The more people purchase, the more bots you have. If no one purchases, you have less bots (You will probably never have 0 bots, they will always try)
• Bots are organized. The bots shouting in an area are probably alone in their IP as most likely to be banned so other bots actually farming are not impacted. Another one will take its place as soon as banned so I would not bother blacklisting either, just leave the area.
• Bots are not real people in a sweatshop (I know, I know...). Don't even talk to them. They are just scripts running. You might feel like blocking them or taunting them can be fun but you are just wasting your time. They usually have scripts to avoid you anyway.
• SE should continue to have a 0 tolerance policy for people purchasing from bots. No exceptions. They should make it a bit more clear/evident and I HOPE that cash-shoppers are not "immune" or at least less susceptible to bans like I have seen in other games...

[esra01]

As a former CM on another MMO, I feel like most players have no idea how bots work....

Yeah i know that banning the mass produced bots that are below lvl 50 are pretty much a lost cause. But can't they do something about bots that actually have lots of effort put into it? I mean some player use bots just for their personal use whether it is to buy a house, gather high end material, or craft lvl 80 gears. Those bots need some time investment to make, heck I think i found some of them that are using their main account to bot since SE did literally nothing to prevent it. Seriously i found one that has level 80 in everything and I found him because his fishing bot is broken for a long period of time ( 4+ hours until he realized that the bot is glitched out )

[KageTokage]

Much of what was said is really only applicable to the mass-created gil farming bots that never go past ARR and rely on their sheer numbers for profitability.

Like previously stated, the less numerous level 80 bots can realistically be kept under control as it takes time to max out DoH/L classes. Even if they're buying level/story skips it takes around a week for them to max their DoL classes and significantly longer for DoH stuff, and having to complete the ShB MSQ further draws things out.

[KageTokage]

I've started seeing piles of ARC bots farming the piddly 200 gil reward from reclearing the Hall of the Novice trials in upper Limsa Lominsa Decks.

You only get maybe 100 gil per minute tops...but when there's 50+ bots at it I suppose it adds up quickly.

It does make me think that even if SE opted to start attacking their farming methods instead of the bots themselves, they'd always find somewhere to get their money from regardless.

[Goji1639]

There's a huge difference between simply noticing bots and the due diligence it takes to PROVE an account is botting, and that the account being reported isn't a stolen one.

Unfortunately it's just a losing battle. SE would have to delve into questionably legal territory in order to actually monitor our clients to confirm that people are running botting software, and without doing that they're basically guessing when they shut down an account. Meaning, they're taking back $100's worth of digital content, no refund, based on something they believe you're doing but can't PROVE you're doing.

Banning accounts for botting is complicated because it requires TONS of circumstantial evidence, since they can't legally get any real evidence.

[gumas]

you can report the bot but you need to put their name in order whoever on the other side can ban them (and sometime they will get ban for real so it kinda feel good) but typing all the bot name one by one is annoying as hell because their name is just random keyboard mashing.

luckily you only see them on early levels/starting area, outside that you almost never see them again (the furthest i see is around level 30ish area)

just get used to it, while they can get ban, they just pop up again its endless, and outside of gathering and killing random mobs, they done nothing harm to your play at least so just ignore them

[KageTokage]

When it comes to bots that operate strictly within ARR areas, they're almost always either shard farmers or the teleport-hacking gil farmers.

The former do not actually gather the shards on a DoL and instead start off in Ul'dah as GLD, then attempt to reach/clear the first two DoH job quests for each job ASAP to get the pile of shards from the quest rewards, afterwhich they transfer the goods off to the main "bank" account that holds/sells everything before deleting themselves and repeating the process. If you see a bunch of GLDs doing a conga line around Western/Central Thanalan, then that's probably what you're seeing.

Pretty much everyone has noticed the latter at some point because of their tendency to suddenly arrive at one of the capital aetherytes in droves before subsequently disappearing. Where they end up doing the farming varies, though I mostly see them (Via player search) going in and out of Amdapor Keep, Wanderer's Palace, or most recently the Hall of the Novice trials.


When it comes to post-ARR stuff, though, you'll see them doing virtually everything, though gathering is by far the most common activity. It's mostly a matter of recognizing their jerky "point A to point B" style of movement.